ATHEISM AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

(July, 1889.)

Sunday, July 14, is the hundredth anniversary of the fall of the
Bastille, and the occasion will be splendidly celebrated at Paris.
In itself the capture of this prison-fortress by the people was not a
wonderful achievement; it was ill-defended, and its governor might, had
he chosen, have exploded the powder magazine and blown it sky-high. But
the event was the parting of the ways. It showed that the multitude had
got the bit between its teeth, and needed a more potent master than the
poor king at Versailles. And the event itself was a striking one. Men
are led by imagination, and the Bastille was the symbol of centuries
of oppression. Within its gloomy dungeons hundreds of innocent men had
perished in solitary misery, without indictment or trial, consigned to
death-in-life by the arbitrary order of irresponsible power. Men of the
most eminent intellect and character had suffered within its precincts
for the crime of teaching new truth or exposing old superstitions.
Voltaire himself had twice tasted imprisonment there. What wonder, then,
that the people fixed their gaze upon it on that ominous fourteenth of
July, and attacked it as the very citadel of tyranny? The Bastille fell,
and the sound re-echoed through Europe. It was the signal of a new era
and a new hope. The Revolution had begun—that mighty movement which, in
its meaning and consequences, dwarfs every other cataclysm in history.

But revolutions do not happen miraculously. Their advent is prepared.
They are as much caused as the fall of a ripe apple from the tree,
or the regular bursting of the buds in spring. The authors of the
Revolution were in their graves. Its leaders, or its instruments,
appeared upon the scene in '89. After life's fitful fever Voltaire was
sleeping well. Rousseau's tortured heart was at rest. Diderot's colossal
labors were ended; his epitaph was written, and the great Encyclopaedia
remained as his living monument. D'Holbach had just joined his friends
in their eternal repose. A host of smaller men, also, but admirable
soldiers of progress in their degree, had passed away. The gallant host
had done its work. The ground was ploughed, the seed was sown, and the
harvest was sure. Famished as they were, and well-nigh desperate at
times, the men of the Revolution nursed the crop as a sacred legacy,
shedding their blood like water to fructify the soil in which it grew.

Superficial readers are ignorant of the mental ferment which went on in
France before the Revolution. Voltaire's policy of sapping the dogmas by
which all tyranny was supported had been carried out unflinchingly.
Not only had Christianity been attacked in every conceivable way, with
science, scholarship, argument, and wit; but the very foundations of
all religion—the belief in soul and God—had not been spared. The
Heresiarch of Ferney lived to see the war with superstition carried
farther than he contemplated or desired; but it was impossible for
him to say to the tide of Freethought, "Thus far shalt thou go and no
farther, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." The tide poured on
over everything sacred. Altars, thrones, and coronets met with a common
fate. True, they were afterwards fished out of the deluge; but their
glory was for ever quenched, their power for ever gone.

Among the great Atheists who prepared the Revolution we single out
two—Diderot and D'Holbach. The sagacious mind of Comte perceived that
Diderot was the greatest thinker of the band. The fecundity of his
mind was extraordinary, and even more so his scientific prescience.
Anyone who looks through the twenty volumes of his collected works will
be astonished at the way in which, by intuitive insight, he anticipated
so many of the best ideas of Evolution. His labors on the Encyclopaedia
would have tired out the energies of twenty smaller men, but he
persevered to the end, despite printers, priests, and governments, and a
countless host of other obstructions. Out of date as the work is now, it
was the artillery of the movement of progress then. As Mr. Morley says,
it "rallied all that was best in France round the standard of light and
social hope."

Less original, but nearly as bold and industrious, D'Holbach placed his
fortune and abilities at the service of Freethought. Mr. Morley calls
the System of Nature "a thunderous engine of revolt." It was Atheistic
in religion, and revolutionary in politics. It challenged every enemy of
freedom in the name of reason and humanity. Here and there its somewhat
diffuse rhetoric was lit up with the splendidly concise eloquence of
Diderot, who touched the work with a master-hand. Nor did this powerful
book represent a tithe of D'Holbach's labors for the "good old cause."
His active pen produced a score of other works, under various names
and disguises, all addressed to the same object—the destruction
of superstition and the emancipation of the human mind. They were
extensively circulated, and must have created a powerful impression on
the reading public.

Leaving its authors and precursors, and coming to the Revolution itself,
we find that its most distinguished figures were Atheists. Mirabeau,
the first Titan of the struggle, was a godless statesman. In him the
multitude found a master, who ruled it by his genius and eloquence,
and his embodiment of its aspirations. The crowned king of France was
pottering in his palace, but the real king reigned in the National
Assembly.

The Girondists were nearly all Atheists, from Condorcet and Madame
Roland down to the obscurest victims of the Terror who went gaily to
their doom with the hymn of freedom upon their proud lips. Danton also,
the second Titan of the Revolution, was an Atheist. He fell in trying
to stop the bloodshed, which Robespierre, the Deist, continued until it
drowned him. With Danton there went to the guillotine another Atheist,
bright, witty Camille Desmoulins, whose exquisite pen had served the
cause well, and whose warm poet's blood was destined to gush out under
the fatal knife. Other names crowd upon us, too numerous to recite.
To give them all would be to write a catalogue of the revolutionary
leaders.

Atheism was the very spirit of the Revolution. This has been admitted
by Christian writers, who have sought revenge by libelling the movement.
Their slanders are manifold, but we select two which are found most
impressive at orthodox meetings.

It is stated that the Revolutionists organised a worship of the Goddess
of Reason, that they went in procession to Notre Dame, where a naked
woman acted the part of the goddess, while Chenier's Ode was chanted
by the Convention. Now there is a good deal of smoke in this story and
very little flame. The naked female is a pious invention, and that being
gone, the calumny is robbed of its sting. Demoiselle Candeille,
an actress, was selected for her beauty; but she was not a "harlot," and
she was not undressed. Whoever turns to such an accessible account as
Carlyle's will see that the apologists of Christianity have utterly
misrepresented the scene.

Secondly, it is asserted that the Revolution was a tornado of murder;
cruelty was let loose, and the Atheists waded in blood. Never was
greater nonsense paraded with a serious face. During the Terror itself
the total number of victims, as proved by the official records, was
less than three thousand; not a tenth part of the number who fell in the
single massacre of St. Bartholomew!

But who caused the Terror? The Christian monarchies that declared war
on Freethinkers and regicides. Theirs was the guilt, and they are
responsible for the bloodshed. France trembled for a moment. She aimed
at the traitors within her borders, and struck down many a gallant
friend in error. But she recovered from the panic. Then her sons,
half-starved, ragged, shoeless, ill-armed, marched to the frontier,
hurled back her enemies, and swept the trained armies of Europe into
flight. They would be free, and who should say them nay? They were not
to be terrified or deluded by "the blood on the hands of the king or the
lie at the lips of the priest." And if the struggle developed until the
French armies, exchanging defence for conquest, thundered over Europe,
from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, from the orange-groves of Spain
to the frozen snows of Russia—the whole blame rests with the pious
scoundrels who would not let France establish a Republic in peace.